Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Wednesday in Romania. June 1, 21016

Wednesday 1 June, 2016.

Noon meeting at BBU. I met with Oana in the international office for about 15 minutes, then she passed me off to another colleague until Ramona Onciu came in, bruskly asked me if I had my boarding pass (?!), signed my paperwork and took it, told me I would receive the scholarship on Friday, and then said they were very busy. Basically. No photos.

I did enjoy the brief meeting with Oana and she gave me instructions on where to go to meet for the salt mine excursion on Friday.

Oana was busy with other International Student business, so she handed me off to yet another associated. That woman spoke with me about her return to work after three YEARS of maternity leave. Three years. They have a choice to take one year or three years, the three year plan giving them far less money during their absence. The government will pay up to 85% of their income while on maternity leave if it is only one year. For three years, they receive the equivalent of about 400 US dollars, but she didn't say if that was per month or one lump sum. And she discussed how their country is gong to be in trouble soon due to the lack of employed gen x and gen y people...and how Gypsies come into play in the formula. Interesting. They (Gypsies) do have children, but they do NOT educate them (beyond about three years of school on average she said), so there are no jobs they can to to contribute to the society and the tax base.

In the afternoon, Mike and I wandered down to the central park area. It was a very pretty area and they were having a fair/street with activities, venders, kind of like our Iron County Fair, but without the rides. Food, fun, performances, displays and LOTS of families and finally some children! We have seen so few. Mike sat on a bench and rested, I walked around and took pictures until my camera battery died. Then it started to rain, but not really hard. We waited it out under a tree on our way back to our room. (We did not take our umbrella with us.)

I wish I would have taken a photo of cars parked on sidewalks. These are side-streets, but they look like alleys because there are no sidewalks. But they are streets.

Face painting and clowns at the little fair.

A cheshire cat and some creepy manikins in the tree.

This is the park area where the close-up of the lawn was taken. You can see the bitty white daisies in this pix.

Fountain in the park area. They had a performance stage for this little fair, too.

Paddle boats that look like cars. Cute.

I just loved all the cobble stoned walks and roads. Patterns abounded.

I think this is in "Museum Square". There is a monument here, but I was noticing these two buildings. One stripped down to the bricks. But they do dress it up with flowers in window boxes.

Since we were going so slowly, it was time to eat dinner.

Before we stopped for dinner, we did stop by the visitor information area and got info on travel to Sibiu. And lots of pamplets.

Dinner was outside by a lovely ancient wall...the actual wall of the old city. The wall where, if you were Romanian 2 centuries ago, you could not live on the inside the city side, but had to live outside of the city wall. Only the conquering German and Hungarian peoples could live inside the walled city limits. We actually ate American style food, just to see the difference. Mike's burger was tasty, and very garlicky. The "bacon" in the bacon burger was diced up and mixed inside the patty. It was very good. My grilled cheese and ham was actually two small sandwiches, so I only ate one and brought the other home. No ketchup to go with Mikes fries, but we didn't ask for it, either.

Various stages and lack thereof of roofs and fences and wall. And always lots of graffiti. Everywhere.

Check out the rain gutter holders--they are sunflowers. Cute

To keep mike from falling asleep too early that evening, we played Geoguessr online, and I also checked with our front desk people about getting a taxi for Friday, car rentals to Sibiu, airport closures (they don't close, she said).

We have been having such a grand time exploring bits and pieces of the city! Its beautiful, old, interesting and very safe and friendly. Smokey. But lovely.